Major Kelp DAO cross-chain bridge theft attributed to North Korean hackers

North Korean state-backed threat operation TraderTraitor, a subset of the Lazarus Group, was reported by cryptocurrency infrastructure developer LayerZero to have been behind the nearly $300 million crypto heist on major liquid restaking protocol Kelp DAO over the weekend that involved the compromise of its LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Only Kelp was affected by the intrusion, which involved the compromise of the firm's transaction verification systems, downstream infrastructure manipulation, and a distributed denial-of-service attack against its backups, noted LayerZero. LayerZero also blamed the liquid restaking protocol for the incident due to its usage of a lone Decentralized Verifier Network despite its repeated recommendations of a multi-DVN setup.

"Operating a single-point-of-failure configuration meant there was no independent verifier to catch and reject a forged message," said LayerZero. Such findings were contested by a Kelp source, who noted LayerZero's assessment to mention the compromise of its own servers.